


The Haunted Heart

by gloss



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, a shipper's tale, non-gratuitous references to wizardy herbert, questionable interpersonal ethics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 00:58:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Fefeta became the cosmos's #1 Roxy/Calliope shipper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Haunted Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phidari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phidari/gifts).



> Thanks to G. for brainstorming and beta. Title from Sleater-Kinney, "Funeral Song".

Kissing Roxy, like doing anything else with her, was an adventure. She was grabby and eager and so determined that you could do little more than hang on and fight to match her.

You -- neither of you, the yous who you used to be -- had never spent much time with the humans, so everything about this was new. You suspected, however, that Roxy wasn't quite like other humans, even if her teeth were as blunt as theirs and her skin as fragile and hot to the touch.

"Mmm, yummy," Roxy murmured when the kiss broke. Her eyes stayed closed as she buried her face in the curve of your shoulder. "Tell me another story."

You had a million of them. Sea-shanties and star-crossed lovers, horrors of the deep and affairs of the heart, tragedy and romance and more, so much more.

She curled around your bobbing figure, head in what passed for your lap, arms looped tightly around your waist. The trolls you had been should have recoiled from such closeness, sneered at her trust and sought to exploit it, but you, neither of you, were never very good at that aspect of trolldom. You'd been able to hold your own in fights, and quite well, thank you, but seeking them out, instigating them, had never been your forte.

And now you were someone, some _thing_ , else.

You died young, way too young. Too young to have learned very much at all beyond the rudiments of passion and need. You didn't know much about the world, about people's hearts, about yourself.

But you talked to Roxy about all of that, and more. You talked to her through cravings and glooms and exulted highs. You kept talking and she stayed -- not "dry", she stopped calling it that when she saw how it bothered you -- sober.

You still weren't entirely sure how the making out began. You were her guide! But her game was dead and whatever assistance you were supposed to offer was useless. You were a good listener and even better company, or so she claimed, and she liked you.

"I _love_ you," she insisted in the middle of the kiss. You didn't doubt that, but neither were you convinced that that meant what it did when other people said it. 

Sincerity, and Roxy was _built_ of sincerity as surely as you were of spectres and game code, was not quite the same as exclusivity.

You weren't meant for each other, but you were coming to realize that you could still mean a hell of a lot to each other.

You weren't what she needed, not longterm (but what did any of you know about the long term?), but you did your best. You certainly weren't unhappy. This was a temporary, stopgap kind of matespritship. It was closer to a secondary moirallegiance than anything else.

"No way, no how, sister!" Roxy tugged on your necklace and scritched up under your chin, but you resisted the (very tempting) distraction. "Ain't nothing temporary about how I feel for you."

That wasn't what you meant. You floated just out of reach. "I meant that you have lots of, of -- love! In your life."

Roxy waggled her eyebrows. "And in my pants."

You bopped her on the head and she pretended to cower, even though it took quite a bit of effort to make yourself material enough to touch and make contact. "You know what I mean."

She lay back in the soft sand and spread her arms and legs to make another sand-cherub. "Do I? 'cause it sounded like you were calling me a slut."

"No!" You dropped down next to her, letting your tail trail a halo over her head. "You just have lots of moirails."

"Name one." She tried to look tough, her arms crossed and eyes narrowed, but she had sand glinting in her hair and a smudge of lipstick on her chin. "Go on."

"You've got Jane."

"Aww, Janey the Crock!" She snuggled closer. "Love that girl."

"Exactly."

She twisted around to catch your eye. "Are we arguing? Is this an argument?"

In your experience, arguments were knock-down, drag-out altercations, full of snarls and nicked horns, teeth and claws. Even by fragile human standards, however, this was hardly anything. "I don't think so. We can disagree without arguing, I think?"

"Maybe," she said, settling back with a sigh. "I hate arguing, though."

As unfamiliar as you were with human customs, sometimes it seemed to you that Roxy was almost equally unacquainted.

"All I'm saying," you tried, but she kissed you quiet. You enjoyed it for a moment, then faded enough to go immaterial. "Moirails. You've got them."

"So?"

"Nothing! That was all I wanted to say!"

She poked her finger through your chest. You weren't ever going to get used to that, especially when she twisted her finger, hooking it in your ether and dragging you closer. "Is it, though?" she asked in her tough-girl voice. " _Is it?_ "

You were laughing as you rematerialized. "It really is! You've got lots of love, Roxy Lalonde. That's all!"

"Maybe I like to double up," she said. "Double up, double down. Hedge my bets, trim 'em real close and neat, full Scissorhands experience."

"And Calliope," you put in when she finally trailed off. The firefly constantly in her hair went still.

"Double-double, then. Aw, nerts, now I have to call her name, just in case." She put both hands to her mouth, inhaled deeply, and bellowed. "CALLIOPE!" 

After waiting a moment, she reclined back against you. "Where was I, sprite o'mine?"

"I have no idea."

"Lol, yeah, right, robobrain." She grinned up at you. "Not like I'm a troll, not last I checked, anyway. Maybe I can have as many moirails and lov-ahs as I damn well please."

"Maybe you can." You tipped your cheek against the top of her head and closed your eyes, thinking this was the end. 

Roxy, however, gave you a run for your caegars when it came to chattiness. "Neither are you, come to think of it. Neither of you, are you. Neither." She drew out the syllables as if tasting them. "Nei-iiiii-ther. Neether. Neener-neener."

The firefly twinkled, almost perfectly in time with Roxy's sleepy giggle.

You didn't know what you were, not any more. You were trolls, partly, however that plural worked, but you were also dead-and-returned, as well as a computer-generated construct.

It was those last two parts that functioned together now, ghostly memories twined with and shot through with very deep, basic binary code. Yes/no, on/off, bright/dark. 

Dot/dash.

You glowed and dimmed in turn in order to address the bug. "I know you! I'm sure I know you."

Startled, the firefly shot upward, then dropped to hide behind Roxy's hair before it peeked out around her far ear. It flashed, quite rapidly, "No! I'm just an ordinary firefly!"

".-.. --- .-..," you beamed, channelling Roxy. "L-O-L. As if."

The memory was terrifically vivid: one of you, before spritehood, back in the dreambubbles, and the sudden arrival of a dying pawn, abdomen ripped open, with a firefly buzzing madly near his face. You -- part of you, to be precise, but you long ago tired of distinguishing constantly among all your constituent elements -- healed him. You knew less than nothing about carapacian anatomy, but life is life, always would be, ever had been.

Roxy stirred in her sleep. Her eyelids trembled and lips twitched; you stroked her shoulder and the firefly alighted on her temple, dimming markedly.

The quiet stretched out, widening and deepening. Roxy calmed, turning on her side and burying her face in the crook of her arm. You let your hand drift across the bright surface of her hair while the firefly tucked itself in her curls.

"You love her," you said, slowly. The code was clear and precise. 

_You_ felt neither clear nor precise, no matter how much of you was composed of machine language, but the language couldn't be anything else. Your figure swelled with light, then darkened. In the past, just Nepeta would have rejoiced over this kind of realization, and you were certainly _pleased_ , yet you were also baffled.

"You love her, Herbert," you continued, even more slowly.

The firefly ducked behind Roxy's shoulder again before rising to close the distance between you. "Not Herbert," it flashed. "I'm --"

 _Calliope_.

*

You knew what you had to do. 

It would take a long time, longer than you could have ever known. but you were going to bring them together.

After you were two again, separated but never apart, you both, with Sollux's grumbling, gripe-laden assistance, found her. This time she was hiding at the bottom of a whirlpool well. Feferi dove and dove, into the coalescing dark, the water streaming past you, caught her by the collar and hauled her up to the air and light. 

She covered her crocodile's mouth with both hands and shook her head wildly.

You patted her shoulders, one on each side, while Sollux rolled his blind eyes and muttered something about drama.

You knew a thing or two about keeping the peace through silence, not to worry.

You'd picked up sign language from Meulin, though most of what you knew from her were insults and imprecations. You didn't get along with her, let's put it that way. Nepeta found her romantic choices maddeningly muddled, while Feferi simply distrusted her on first sight.

"You have to come back," Nepeta told her.

"When you can," Feferi added. Her signs were quicker, more confident. "But you have to. Come back to her."

Calliope gaped at you, one then the other. She did not seem to trust herself not to speak, because she kept her hands over her mouth even as she nodded in agreement.

"Promise!" Nepeta signed, and then again. She leaned in, eyes widened and fangs bared, for emphasis. "Purr-omise."

Calliope's eyes were as white as yours, but set against her green skin, they glowed, eerie as any parasite in the deep. Her lashes curled against her cheek when she blinked, then kept her eyes closed. She dropped her head, still nodding, her chin digging into her chest.

"I promise," she whispered.

*

She didn't think Roxy would like her true form. As if she'd never _met_ Roxy! You'd be hardpressed to think of a less judgmental soul, human or troll, ghost or living. 

Personally, you both thought her cherub form was cute. Imposing in the abstract, but with her long lashes and dapper suits, _adorable_ in the particular.

It didn't matter which line of argument you took -- Roxy's openheartedness, the imperative to try anything for love, the fact that Roxy lived in a whole new world now -- Calliope stood firm. No one wanted her: she seemed determined to make this fear become fact.

You were a rogue and a witch, however. You could be formidable when you put your heads together.

"You promised," you reminded her.

"She deserves better," Calliope said for the thousandth time. "She can do so much better."

On a reconstituted Earth, one that was attempting to integrate the trolls as neither overlords nor pets, but equals, Roxy was currently living in downtown Neo Altadena with seven cats and the carapacians she'd rescued from her colony. You got the feeling she didn't have a lot of soft-skinned visitors, though she denied that wholeheartedly.

"Way busy," she insisted, handing you a kitten she'd coaxed down off her balcony railing. You were really a ghost down here, however, and the kitten fell to the floor. "Whiskers!" 

She ran after the kitten and when she returned, she awkwardly changed the subject.

She'd lost an eye in the final battle and wore her patch proudly. "Always thought I was Beatrix, I turned out to be Herbert through and through." 

You didn't get that reference until Sollux later uncovered her fic files from deep in her computer's memory. It didn't matter; she had her chin in the air and her jaw set and she wasn't going to admit a single worry or doubt.

(Feferi had voiced some qualms about the hacking of Roxy's computer, but as a Rogue of Heart, Nepeta knew she had to serve love by any means necessary. A little e-surveillance, among other stratagems, barely registered on the scale of regrettable endeavours.)

"You're always Beatrix," you reassured her while blowing up a tiny dust storm for the cats to chase. Earth cats were so _little_ , like squeakbeasts and nuthounds!)

She glanced at you, which made you realize you'd lost your place in the conversation. But then she smiled, and a Roxy smile was blinding and beautiful in equal measure, so you forgot your embarrassment.

"Funny you should say that." She took a sip of coffee, then another, and scratched the side of her neck. "Something weird --. Never mind."

"No, tell me. Us."

She squinted in your direction, her smile softer but no less lovely, and murmured. "Still getting used to two of you."

"Roxy..."

"Right, right! Sorry." She shook herself, then rearranged her position on the low sofa. Not quite looking you -- either of you -- in the eye, she said, low and very quick, "I think I met someone maybe I met someone really cool I hope so."

You knew this already, of course. Her paramour's name was Dante, they were new to this plane of existence and eager to make friends "and maybe more lol". You -- mostly Feferi, she just had a _knack_ for the voice -- were Dante.

"Omigod!" you said. "Tell. Me. Everything."

"It's just online right now," Roxy admitted, "but, hey, I went sixteen years of all online relationships and I don't think it messed me up _too_ much -- don't laugh!"

You weren't. Well. Maybe smirking, a little.

She pretended to pout, but couldn't last long before grinning again and leaning forward. "It's so awesome! Like I've known them my whole life. Longer, even, somehow."

"Entirely possible," you pointed out and she poked you. Where once you could have firmed up against her touch, now her finger went right through Nepeta's waist.

"Dante," Roxy said dreamily. "Their name. Isn't that _perfect_?"

Because her screenname wasn't TG any longer, but Beatrix. 

"They're...green," she added, her eyes widening and shining and if you still had any sort of vascular apparatus, it would have leapt and throbbed and all but somersaulted. "Beautiful lizard green."

"Wow," you managed to say. Roxy hugged herself and nodded. "You should meet!"

"I want to," she whispered. "Do you think I should? Would you come? What if they're some kind of interdimensional axe murderer?"

"Don't worry about a thing," you told her, and it took the strength of two wills to materialize enough to slip a ghostly limb around her warm neck. "This is going to be amazing."


End file.
